


A Mystery To You and Me

by Dekka



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, Future, M/M, Visions, happiness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 02:02:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13940190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dekka/pseuds/Dekka
Summary: "So you're like Raven from That's so Raven?" Auston asks, only half joking.Mitch grimaces. His fingers are toying with the strings of his hoodie, his gaze locked down.It's not the response Auston expected, forcing his laugh to choke off in his throat, his eyes frantically searching for some kind of tell that Mitch is lying.





	1. Chapter 1

Static has been Mitch’s enemy since the ripe age of two.

It had a way of cutting into his head and ripping apart his skin as it called his name over and over and over again.

The noise of it, the sound, the feeling, were precursors to a phenomena that he’d never be able to fully understand. Then the main event, the vision, would come, leaving him staring blankly into the future. 

Growing up, he’d watch That’s So Raven and wonder if there was anyone else like him alive. 

He thought there must be for them to know his struggles so intimately. His Grandma liked to remind him that it ran in their family, but his Mom had never seen the future like he had. 

It was easier to grasp when he turned eleven and his parents finally sat him down to explain beyond the threats they gave him to stay silent about his visions. 

They told him what happens to him is a gift and that seeing the future would help him some day, even though in the moment it left him cradling broken bones with his nose gushing blood.

It seemed cool, at first, before he learned what happens when you see an unfavorable future. 

Whatever he’d see, he’d feel, mentally and psychically. Whatever happened in the vision, happened to him, even if it wasn’t his future. 

They never had to explain the injuries to him because Mitch _saw_ it, he lived it. 

He remembers once the static clouding his mind and brining him to an arena one day when he was twelve. His aunt was there, riding a horse, but when he called out to her it was like he was a ghost, his voice just a whisper in the wind. When she fell, landing awkwardly on her side and crying out for help, he was back in the present before he could even go to her. 

The next morning, his side was covered in bruises that matched where she fell and his Mom teared up as she heard the news from her brother in law. After, she had looked at Mitch knowingly, raising the edge of his shirt to see the platter of bruises there. 

“You’re so lucky she’s okay,” she had gasped wetly. 

He didn't know how to respond, too young to deal with such devastating emotions.

His Mom must’ve known, soothing him as she pulled him close and begged, “If you ever see something where someone is going to die, close your eyes. Leave the vision.” 

Mitch nodded, but at the time he didn't know how. He was a prisoner to whatever his mind showed him and a prisoner to the toll his visions had on his body. 

-

Hockey becomes the natural solution. He’s smaller than most kids his age, so it’s easy to blame his injury of the week on them. 

He just wishes his parents could find a solution instead of a cover up to the aftermath of his visions.

 

When he’s twelve he sees his brother break his arm a day before it happens. They get matching casts and weird looks, but Mitch learns his lie- they were just playing a game of street hockey. 

Fourteen comes and he watches a car accident a week before either victim even gets in the driver’s seat. He can feel it in his gut that his one wont end well- but when he closes his eyes to the vision he’s left hanging in time, the future waiting for him to see. 

He never watches the passengers die, but he still feels their aches, their pains, and their loved one’s pain. It’s the price he has to pay to see the future, even when he’d rather not see anything at all. 

-

Sports are just a way of release for him, but that release grows. La crosse, soccer, hockey- sports become a safe haven, a place where he doesn’t have to worry about the future. There’s only winning and losing, here, no life and death, no outcome he can’t handle. 

-

Connor McDavid is the first person outside of his family to find out about his gift. 

It’s an accident, because Mitch has grown up knowing that there’s plenty of people who would love to tear him apart and find out what makes him tick. 

It’s too dangerous to tell people, even friends. He doesn’t want to end up in a lab somewhere, like his great grandma. 

Even though he knows the risks, Mitch finds he doesn’t mind Connor knowing, even when he drags Dylan into it all, too. 

Dylan is less eloquent about the whole thing- “do we make it to the show?” He’s eager, nearly falling off the edge of the hotel bed. 

Mitch thinks for once he’ll let himself enjoy this. 

“Give me your watch,” he prods. It’s the worst watch in the history of watches, too big and gaudy. Dylan loves the thing, but he hands it over without a second thought. 

“Do you need it to, like,” Stromer makes a weird gesture at his forehead, “ _see the future_.”

Mitch chucks the thing, listening to the satisfying sound of it hitting the tile floor in the connecting bathroom. Dylan’s eager expression sours. 

“I liked that watch,” he says. Mitch shrugs, “it would’ve got hooked on something and sprained your wrist. You would’ve been out for three months.” It’s pure lies, but that thing was hideous. 

Believing him, Dylan’s mouth drops, his eyes wide, but when he looks at Connor the older shakes his head, letting him know Mitch is messing with him. 

“Common, show me or I won’t believe you,” he begs. 

Uneasily, Mitch gulps. Forcing a vision isn’t exactly a cake-walk. The last time he tried he passed out completely. 

His Mom has always told him it’s too dangerous, but he’s been practicing. 

“I might faint,” he admits, “and my nose will for sure bleed.” 

Connor’s starting to look uneasy now too, but he’s the one who found Mitch mid-vision tonight away, so he figures this’ll just be the cherry on top of the cake. 

“I’ll get tissues,” Dylan promises, and dashes to the bathroom. 

While they wait Mitch steels himself, trying to talk himself into this. 

“Hey, you don’t have to,” Connor reminds him, gentle. “Dylan heard how freaked out I was, he knows we’re not messing with him.” For the thousandth time Mitch is grateful for fact that it’s Connor who knows.

He nods, considers backing out, but he eventually brushes off Davo’s worry. 

“I’ll be fine.” 

Dylan brings back the whole tissue box and a role of toilet paper. 

“It helps if I-” Mitch awkwardly grabs each of their hands, tugging them to sit on the edge of the same bed as him. 

He tries to clear his head, focusing on the heartbeat he can feel in his palms and theirs, and sure enough the static comes. It ebbs through him at first, gentle and unsure, until it feels his welcome. From there it comes in a title wave, growing dark and crashing over him, bleeding a new scene into the room. 

_They’re at the draft, thousands of blurred faces surrounding them. Mitch has to wade through the pulsing energies of each person until he can focus on them and only them. Connor goes first to Edmonton, Dylan to Arizona after, and Mitch pushes away from the scene, not wanting to see his own future. Instead, he searches deeper into the void surrounding him, pushing to go forward in time._

_He sees skates, money, cars, women, men, and he feels a pain, a sharp longing in his chest for home. The pain isn’t his own. It’s Dylan’s, in spring of next year._

It’s not easy to pull himself out, but the reality of the sadness he felt after the excitement bled away helps ground him. 

“Mitch?” Davo asks. He sounds far away and frantic, so Mitch finds a way to drag his eyes to him. 

He’s there, not even a foot away, but it feels like miles. 

“Tissues,” Davo commands, his captain voice in full effect, and as if reminding him, Mitch finally can taste the copper of his blood streaming into his mouth. It helps bring him up from the remains of the vision, slowly still, but faster than he would have without it. 

He’s at least present enough to wrap his hand around the wad of tissues Dylan keeps holding to his nose. 

To Stromer’s credit, he waits until Mitch tells them he’s okay before he asks about what he saw. 

Mitch keeps the longing, the sadness he felt to himself. It’s their future and it’s his to change. He won’t let Dylan slip into that feeling of home sickness, not even if he has to Skype him everyday. The pain felt suffocating, like a physical burden, but it’s one he has no right to bare. 

-

Even in the few involuntary visions he gets, Mitch doesn’t ever see himself get drafted, but he likes that for once something is a surprise. 

He never even meant to make it pro. Hockey was just something to blame away the injuries he got from his visions, but somehow over the years it turned into so much more. 

As if congratulating him, his vision-related injuries slow down with their frequency, and the few times they do come, they leave him with only cuts or bruises- nothing like the time his whole arm had broken itself. 

So things go well- almost unnaturally well. 

The visions behave themselves and Mitch starts thinking he finally has a handle on it all. 

Sometimes, he wishes he’d be forced to see his own future more often, just to prepare himself for the storm he knows will eventually rain down. 

\- 

He lasts a year and a half in the NHL with his gift closely guarded, but then his head goes light during practice, his first warning of an oncoming vision. 

Normally the warning comes early enough that he can get away from everyone and wait it out, but he knows it’s coming on too fast. 

The bench is too far away, he’ll never make it in time. 

On his left and right he’s surrounded by teammates, Coach in front of them saying things that Mitch is already having trouble hearing as the vision works to take over.

All the anxiety building up on him only makes the static in his brain fester, angry with his defiance. 

He hears his name in a low, worried tone, but at this point he has one eye in the present and one in the future, and he’s not sure which is which to grasp onto. 

The ground falls from under him as if it was never there at all, and then he’s sitting on a beach. 

_Around him people are lounging, tanning, and a few feet away some guys are playing volleyball. Mitch isn’t sure who’s eyes he’s watching this all from, but they feel familiar._

_There’s no pain, no sadness, nothing important to remember._

_He watches, waits, but nothing comes._

Ice bleeds back into his vision at an ironically glacial pace. 

There’s low chatter in the present, the faint remaining smell of sunscreen from the future, and what feels like every person of their medial staff hovering over him. 

He’s flat on his back, staring up, but when he tries to sit up they hold him down. 

Above him, Paul’s mouth is moving in a dance of words that are too muted to be heard as his hands search over Mitch’s chest, feeling for breath, feeling for an answer.

Fighting the cotton taking up his brain, Mitch is still trying to come back to the present. “I’m okay,” he promises, but he cant even hear his own voice yet, still stuck in the after effects of the vision. 

The ringing bouncing in his skull peaks and absentmindedly he pushes at his ear drum, begging his senses to come back online. 

After feeling underwater, the call, “ _someone throw a towel_ ,” feels too close, too loud.

Mitch flinches despite himself. 

He’s not selling this “I’m okay” thing very well. 

The requested towel gets handed over instantly, Auston skirting on the edge of Mitch’s vision. 

Before he can even ask to be let up, the cloth is being pushed to his nose, staunching the slow trickle of blood there. 

The bleeding, above everything else (even knowing this happened in front of the team), worries him to the point that his gut turns. 

This vision was nothing, just a glimpse in someone’s future- someone he wasn’t even sure he knew- but it came on so quick, not even allowing him to get to the safety of privacy. And now it’s left his nose bleeding, something that normally only happens when he searches out the future- which he hasn’t done in years because of the dangers of it. 

“Want to try to sit up?” Paul asks, clear now. 

Hesitantly Mitch nods, taking over for the person holding the towel to his nose. 

When he pulls away the cloth to check out the extent of the bleeding, he’s relieved by the relatively small stain there. 

He feels fine, even as they help him to sit up, but they still make him stay down for a while more. 

“Can you tell us what happened?” Paul asks. 

Over the last year and a half Mitch has grown close to him and the rest of the medical staff, but even still he stutters over a answer, unsure what to say. Stupidly, he’s never planned for this. 

“I forgot to eat breakfast,” he shrugs, lamely, trying to play it off. 

Paul’s eyes are searching his, hearing the lie, but he doesn’t call him out on it. 

Mitch prays they’ll leave it alone, but one look over at his teammate’s ashen faces tells him all he needs to know. 

He doesn’t need his gift to tell him that one way or another, his secret won’t be a secret for much longer. 

Not because they know yet, but because there’s no way they’ll be letting this go. 

It’s not everyday that your teammate passes out, nose bleeding, and body comatose. He’d be just as worried, he cant blame them. 

Already, Auston and Marty are skating closer to help him to his feet. 

They’re barely a foot from him when the static rears it’s ugly head again, buzzing through his ears in a crescendo he can’t fight. 

He’s never had back to back uncontrolled visions before, and just the threat has him breathing fast, begging the feeling to ebb away. 

Auston’s arm, wrapping around his, guns down the feeling, piercing it with a connection to the physical feel of the present. 

Against all odds, the vision decides to back away. 

Marty’s less surprising touch kills the remaining static all together, the future no longer on the horizon of Mitch’s sight. 

He’s never been so relieved before, letting them take most of his weight as he tries to get his legs under him both mentally and physically. 

As they lead him off the ice and back to the med rooms, Paul in tow, Mitch can’t help but let himself get lost in thought. 

After having his gift be so well behaved for the last five years, he cant even remember what he did when he had such little control. He feels completely caught off guard, wondering how he’ll even trust himself around others again until he gets a hold over his mind. 

Before they even get him laying down he promises himself that he’ll call his grandma, then Mom tonight. They must know something. 

And if they don’t, the solution is simple but painful. 

He’ll have to quit hockey. He’ll have to rebuild his life until he has control, or risk being outed. 

Auston clasps his shoulder gently, shaking him from his thoughts. 

He’s really grown to love these guys. 

Just looking at Auston has him breathing a little easier, soothed by his familiar presence. 

He’s not alone anymore. He has a team. He has friends. He has his family. 

He’s not ready to give a single one of them up. 

This last year and half he’s been the happiest he’s ever been.

He’s starting to think that telling them all is worth whatever may come as long as he gets this happiness for a little longer. 

The love felt all around is proved by his teammate’s faces, still pinched in worry. Mitch is too shaken to comfort them, to promise he’s alright, because he doesn’t know how far this will go. There’s too many unknowns to promise that he’ll be okay.

“Feel better,” Marty offers. Him and Auston still hesitate to leave, but Paul pushes them towards the door so he can work. 

With the start of a new plan in place, Mitch is thankful for the privacy. 

“Paul,” he calls, and the knowing look their trainer settles him with is all he needs to see to know that this is the right decision. 

“You going to tell me what actually happened out there?” Paul asks, pulling up a chair to the med table Mitch is laying on. “I saw you eating with the team this morning, Mitchy. You could’ve at least had a better lie.” 

All Mitch can do is offer him is a weak smile. 

“You’re never going to believe me,” he starts, and Paul leans closer.


	2. Chapter 2

Paul sits back, his breath leaving him like a punch to the chest. 

“I know how it sounds,” Mitch defends, after explaining his visions, but Paul is back in motion nearly as fast as he was thrown off course. He’s the first person Mitch has ever told voluntarily besides Dylan, who even then was technically told by Davo.

“Okay, Mitch lay back. Everything’s going to be okay,” he starts. And Mitch is already listening, so used to trusting Paul that he’s settling back and breathing out his first easy breath since he fell to ice before he even realizes that Paul is hovering, unsure. 

Something about his shifting weight gives him away. 

“You don’t believe me,” Mitch says, painfully simple. 

Paul’s eyes are pits of sympathy, dragging Mitch to the bottom of a well he cant climb out of. He can feel his fingers scraping for purchase on something, anything, as he slips lower and deeper. 

“Mitch, these things happen. Sometimes when you fall you hit your head and-” he shrugs almost helplessly, patting Mitch on the leg consolingly as if it’s just the beginning of bad news to come. 

Mitch is still stuttering over his words, trying to think of what to say, when Paul reaches for his phone. He’s too shocked to react, his thoughts syrupy and slow under his panicked mind. 

“Yes. We have an emergency at-”

The words shock Mitch into motion as Paul talks quickly to the 911 dispatcher. The threat of more medical personnel finding out forces Mitch to his feet, his hand grabbing the phone. He’s not powerful but he’s fast, and he uses that to his advantage as he jumps Paul, running for his life to get the examination table between them. 

The second they’re at a standstill, both panting on each side of the table, he lets himself take a full breath, tuning in to the frantic calls of the dispatcher. 

“We’re all good, sorry, false alarm,” he assures them. 

Paul’s shaking his head, but Mitch can’t let this happen. He isn’t confused. He isn’t concussed. He can just see the future. Simple as that. 

“Paul,” he soothes, calling his name like a lion tamer with his head caught in the trap of the animal’s jaw. 

There’s no soothing effect. Paul’s lips press together, his hands coming up in a way that’s clearly supposed to placate Mitch. He clearly doesn’t understand who’s in danger here.

“I can prove it,” Mitch begs. “I can force a vision.” He’s desperate, but Paul is on a mission to protect his ‘health.’ 

“You need to go to a doctor, Mitch. Whatever happened on the ice today clearly messed up your brain somehow, you don’t have to be scared. We’ll take care of you.” 

There’s no convincing him. He’s so sure in his ways, his face so full of concern that Mitch knows there’s no talking him out of calling an ambulance. 

He’ll just have to show him. 

The static is closer now than ever under the unease that’s been floating in the air since this morning. 

He barely has to call to it before it’s wrapping around him, pulling him in like a welcomed hug. 

His eye roll back, his body dropping carelessly to the ground before he can even blink again. 

The future is fickle in that it likes to show him what it wants to. Today, especially, it seems unwilling to cooperate, refusing to bend to Mitch’s will. 

Any fight left in him gets drained before his senses expand wildly, snapping him to only seconds after his second collapse, in the med room. 

He pushes to see them, watching from Paul’s eyes as their trainer runs to his body, checking his neck for a pulse.

The blood pouring from his nose seems never ending, dripping down his cheeks and neck sickeningly. He can’t even feel the wetness there, despite knowing it’s only happening seconds in the future as his body lays dormant, knocked out completely from the forcible call to the static buzzing in the back of his mind, begging him to look further. 

He only goes minutes in advance, wanting to get this gone quickly, hoping that the small jumps won’t take so much out of him.

But coming back to his body isn’t like the other times. There’s no one there to call him up, no one shaking his shoulder, or slapping his cheek, or begging him to come back to the present. He has to find his way in the dark, pulling back curtain after curtain, layer after layer, of life and future, and past. He feels like he’s going in circles, surrounded by static with no way to turn. 

Then, in the darkness of the woods, he hears Auston’s voice soft but clear, and somehow louder than the roar of the buzzing atoms around his eyes. 

“ _Mitch_ ,” he says simply. 

It’s quiet. It’s loud. It’s near but far; Here but not there. 

He crawls to it, pushing to hear his name again, but by the time he’s found it it’s gone, darkness where the sound- where the person calling his name- should be. 

It’s like a nightmare he can’t wake up from, the world around him turning too fast for his brain to take root in any time or any place. 

For a terrifying moment he fears he’ll never come back. 

-

Light presses to his eyes like the glare of the sun is out to get him. 

It burns, but something about the feeling is grounding, almost as if feeling alone was all he needed to come back to himself. 

He hasn’t forced a vision in years, but even still he knows it was never quite like this. 

The once blue shirt he was wearing is now red with his own blood. Paul, in front of him, is speechless. 

“What happened?” Mitch tires to ask. The words on his tongue feel dry, his head almost too heavy to hold up. 

He doesn’t realize Paul is talking to him until he’s ducking his head into Mitch’s line of sight, carefully asking him if he thinks he can stand. 

Mitch cant talk, so he nods, but his shaky legs give away his lie. 

“We’ll stay down here,” Paul promises, lowering him back to the ground. These are the first words that come to him clearly, his hearing finally finding a way back to the present. 

“Thank you,” he croaks, but Paul can only shake his head. 

More and more the fear inside of Mitch is growing. Paul doesn’t startle easy, but whatever happened while he was out clearly has shaken him to his core. 

“What happened?” Mitch asks again, only this time he’s able to find his voice, refusing to not be heard and answered. 

Paul goes heavily from crouching over him to sitting down next to him in a move lacking grace or poise. His head shakes, almost in disbelief. 

“It only lasted a minute,” he says, but he seems to get stuck there, his eyes tracing the ground in front of himself quizzically.

Mitch gives him all the time he needs. He knows this isn’t easy to grasp. Even he struggles with it, and he’s been having these visions for as long as he can remember. 

“You said everything,” Paul starts again, and Mitch can feel his eyebrow’s raise. He’s never talked while passed out from forcing a vision before. Today’s a day of firsts, it seems.

“Everything. You said everything as it was happening,” he finishes. When he seems to find the will to glance up, his eyes are wide as they latch on to Mitch’s. 

“You said ‘phone’ and my phone chimed. ‘Door’ and the door opened.” He’s not accusing him, only stating facts.

“I told you, I can see the future,” Mitch jokes, trying his best to pull not only himself back, but also Paul. 

Behind him, a choked noise sounds. 

Paul doesn’t even flinch, still clearly in shock but aware of the presence behind them, and suddenly Mitch wishes he would’ve asked exactly _why_ he said ‘door’ and exactly _who_ it was that walked in while he was out. 

There’s a part of him that doesn’t even want to turn around, but he knows the longer he delays the inevitable, the worse things tend to get. 

It’s Auston standing there, his back pressed to the wall and his legs folding under him as he slips to the floor, unable to hold his own weight under the shock. 

Mitch doesn’t know if the feeling swirling in his own gut is relief or fear. 

“ _What. the. fuck._ ” Auston whispers, and that, at least, has Mitch forcing down an uneasy smile, huffing out a laugh that quickly gets shot down by Paul’s disapproving glare. 

“What the fuck is right, Mitch,” he half-yells, half-whispers. 

Mitch appreciates his discretion if nothing else. 

“I told you,” he tries, but looking from their trainer to his teammate has his jest melting away quickly. 

“You can’t tell anyone,” he says seriously. “My Great Grandma did and people exploited her. After she died they took her brain, her eyes; they took everything. She wasn’t the same after people knew and they didn’t even leave her alone in death.” His choking words only get steeled eyes pressed his way. He knows his secret is safe here, between the three of them, but the more people that know, the more dangerous this gets.

“No one’s even going to lay a finger on you,” Auston promises. The threat of Mitch’s safety is all that seems to be piercing through his haze of shock. 

Mitch knows later he’ll have to explain himself to Auston, really tell him what’s going on, especially when he only caught glimpses of the situation. It doesn’t help that Paul sends him back to the dressing room to get Mitch clothes that aren’t caked in blood. 

It’s Paul then that gets their plan in motion. 

“We need a medical reason as to why this would happen. We need excuses and paperwork, background files. Everything.” 

Mitch’s chest clenches painfully. “Can we do all that?” 

Paul’s nod is hesitant, but it’s there. “I can try to find a Neurologist that we could trust, someone who would lie for us and sign the paperwork to backup a story of you having a neurological issue.” 

Paul’s idea is unknowingly close to what his great-grandmother originally agreed to, but Mitch trusts him, especially now that he has no choice but to trust him. 

“Okay, but I want to meet them first,” he decides. There’s so much more to talk about, but Paul determines that they’ve had enough excitement today. 

“We all need time to process what just happened,” he argues. 

Mitch cant dispute that, especially once Auston comes back, shakily clutching Mitch’s bag to his chest. He joins them on the floor without thinking, and it’s only then that Mitch realizes that they’re still laid out on the tile of the med rooms, talking about creating fraudulent medical forms and conspiring against what feels like the entire NHL. 

“Do you feel alright?” Paul asks, seeming to realize the same thing. Him and Auston carefully help Mitch up to his feet. 

Admittedly he sways, but he still promises he’s fine, even with the blood loss. 

“Auston, drive him home, make sure he’s alright,” Paul tells him, “and Mitch, take an iron pill, drink lots of water, and get some rest. We’re going to start keeping track of your symptoms and visions. We need to treat this like a medical condition, especially if you want to keep playing.” 

It hits Mitch then that they’re really going to do this. They’re going to hide his visions, excuse them away with science, and let him keep playing. 

They’re not calling him a freak or keeping their distance; they’re helping him. 

“Oh,” he blurts out, stupidly. 

The sound pauses both Auston and Paul in their tracks, and it’s then that Mitch figures dropping another bomb on them wouldn’t cause as much damage as it would later, once they’ve rebuilt. 

“Sometimes, my visions hurt me.” 

There’s silence. A long, painful, silence. 

“Excuse me?” Paul asks. He’s blinking owlishly, a testament to how much one man can handle. 

“Tomorrow, we’ll talk more,” Mitch promises. Paul tries to argue, clearly alarmed by the confession, but Mitch feels like they’ve had enough excitement today, and he still needs to explain to Auston that what he walked in on wasn’t just Mitch knocked out on the ground, spewing out words that hinted at what would happen only seconds after he uttered them. 

With so much planning and plotting, it feels like Auston’s blended into the background, his expression blank and unreadable even after he promised fiercely that he’d protect Mitch’s secret like it was his own, even without really knowing what the secret was. 

At least he has an idea of what’s happening after seeing Mitch give them a glimpse, seconds into the future. Maybe then at least he wont have to force another vision. 

“Ready?” Auston asks, reading out a hand to hover close to Mitch as they walk, just in case he needs the support. 

With the way his eyes are still vacant, Mitch wonders if it should be him leading Auston. 

“You okay to drive?” He asks. 

Auston hesitates but nods, and when Mitch’s steps falter he’s quick to wrap an arm around his waist, helping take some of his weight. “It’ll help clear my head,” he promises. 

“We can eat and shower,” Mitch offers, “before we talk about all of this.” 

Auston’s nod is resolute, his gaze sharpening with clarity as he seems to really look over Mitch. “Yeah, we can get you in some better clothes, and clean, and laying down.” 

Something about his protectiveness brings a wash of settling relief over Mitch, helping him calm the pounding of his heart that hasn’t stopped since he first decided to tell Paul. 

Giving him a goal, a task, seems to help Auston, too, and with their plans determined he steps a little steadier. They’re no longer holding one another up, Auston as strong as a brick wall as he guides them to the car. 

Mitch would normally complain about the fussing, but he’s mentally and physically exhausted enough that he doesn’t even chirp Auston for turning up the heat in the car and reaching over to do up his seatbelt. 

“I still have hands,” Mitch jokes, but Auston only eyes him, pointedly looking down where Mitch’s hands are shakily clasped together in his lap. 

“Put them to the vent,” Auston tells him. They’re not shaking from the cold, but the feeling of warm air threading through his fingers helps ground him enough that he finds himself sinking further and further into the seat, his head dropped lazily so that he can watch Auston expertly weave through traffic. 

The sun outside is just setting, and every couple of turns it halos Auston perfectly, making his skin simmer and the light in the car seem oddly dimmed. 

The last thing he sees before he slips into sleep, lulled by the rhythmic bumps of the road and the periodic sound of the turn signal, is Auston glancing over at him, his lips turned up and expression gentle. 

“Rest up, Mitchy,” he whispers, and that’s all it takes for Mitch to let go, giving in to a different kind of static.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone wrote an awesome Mitch-sees-the-future-fic while I was writing the second chapter of this and I fell so in love with that one that I kind of ignored this to read theirs so sorry this is posted a lot later than I thought it would be! 
> 
> Let me know what you think! comments feed the writer :)

**Author's Note:**

> So I've only written parts of this so if you'd like to see me more let me know or let me know where you'd like to see the fic go!
> 
> Comments feed the writer :)


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